145: Learning & Continuous Development For Sales Reps With Melanie Fellay

Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. Hopefully you had a good weekend. I am sitting here with a really good friend of mine who we've actually been getting to know each other more and more and we're coming up with a partnership here. So I'm super excited with this. Melanie from Speckett, you want to say hi to everybody and give a little background of where you're coming from? Absolutely. Hi, everyone. I'm Melanie. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Speckett. We're a just-in-time learning and enablement solution. What that means is our goal is to help your reps find the information they need to be successful in whatever application they're in. They're on LinkedIn.

They can get their persona card so they know how to address your prospect. If they're in outreach or sales off, they get key objections to handle that they get via email. They're in Salesforce. Your sales process is right there. The goal is to help your reps be successful and spend more time with their customers. I love it. And you and I, I think when we first met, it was almost, uh, an immediate connection, right? Cause like I've been talking about just-in-time learning forever. Uh, never figured out how to do it. Chris and I were fucking around with it for a little while and we just did a horrible job at it. Um, but, uh, as soon as you started talking, I was like, holy shit, finally, somebody who actually gets it and is smarter than me and can actually put this thing together.

Um, what's, uh, I always, before we get into the talk, cause today we're going to talk about, you know, with where we are right now is with COVID and everybody working from home. How do you, as a, as a manager, as a leader, you know, and as a rep, like how do you stay on top of your game? How do you, you know, stay trained and on all that stuff? But, uh, let's take a step back. Why'd you start Speckit? Uh, I I'm always, I'm always curious in that kind of entrepreneurial journey and what drove that, uh, what were you doing beforehand? And then what drove the decision for you to say, fuck it, I'm going to start my own company here. Yeah. Um, so we started Speckit a little over two and a half years ago.

Um, and it was really inspired by my co-founders, Zari and I's experience. We were working at the same company and we were a series C funded company that was growing really fast. So lots of onboarding, super high goals, um, lots of investments being made across technology and tools, uh, specifically Salesforce. And the reality is we were just not getting value of the tools because our teams didn't know how to use them effectively to do their job. Um, and we had so much knowledge and training scattered across all these different locations and we were communicating change, which was happening constantly via email and Slack and chatter. And, you know, we were taking time in our morning, morning meetings to discuss changes in Salesforce.

We were just constantly having to deal with this training issue. And so that's when I started really just looking at solutions on the market, which is a, how can I find a solution that centralizes all this knowledge, all this training in one place so that it's easy to manage, easy to scale. Um, ideally connects to our systems so that we don't need to start this off from scratch. We can pull in your sales process from Salesforce. Um, and then B that actually shows up where my team needs it. Because the one thing that I've learned in now, I've spent quite a bit of time just kind of studying the science behind adult learning. But you know, if you look at habits, if you're not able to respond to that cue for learning, right, you might be in LinkedIn, you're looking at this new persona, you're like, Oh, what is the key value prop that I want to drive home?

Right. You're a new SDR, you know, high level with the value props are, but how do I tie that to the right persona? Being able to surface that to them right there so that they're not having to do guesswork. They're not having to leave. Okay. In what folder and file and system and page is the answer my question, um, became a pretty, uh, obvious, uh, future of work. Let's put it that way. Cool. I love it. So, so let's talk about training. I mean, it's near and dear to both of our hearts, right? I mean, we both do it. Uh, um, in this world right now of, of everybody working from home, uh, we were just talking about this before we got on, right. Where there's, there's something about skills development that's always there.

Right. But then there's the motivational factor. Then there's the, you know, engagement factor and keeping reps engaged. And I think this is, there's a couple of different mentalities that I'm seeing right now. One is that people are really, really using this as an opportunity to better themselves. Right. There there's, they're, they're saying, you know what, I got time now. Let me go read those books. Let me take those courses. The other side though, is the apathy side where it's just like, you know, I just fuck it. You know what I mean? Like I just, I just, I just want to get through this and, and whatever. So if you're a, like, how do you, how do you even approach training right now? Like how would you, or how do you, uh, as a leader of your organization approach training internally, externally resources?

Um, and, and, you know, let's, let's take spec it aside for a second as far as the tool. Cause I love it. But without something like a spec it, how would you even approach development right now? Cause you said something earlier that was really interesting as far as where you came from, right? Your previous like things were changing so fast that, that you had to find a way to be dynamic and agile, right? With your learning. And right now, I mean, talk about things changing fast, right? I mean, whatever worked last week ain't fucking working this week anymore. Like whatever. And, uh, Chris Orlob and I were actually right before we were on this call, I was on a call with him over at Gong and he's just like, it's like literally he's never, I forget how he phrased it.

It was like, he's never seen the, the proliferation of, of approaches and techniques so fast in his life. Like where all of a sudden one day you're like, Oh, you hear like a good eye. Oh, that kind of seems like it makes sense from a messaging standpoint. And then tomorrow, every fucking email in your inbox says that, right? And, and, and like you pushing a little bit this week versus last week, you can't write. So with things moving so fast right now, how do you, how do you even think about structuring a learning environment if you're a leader right now? And then let's talk about the rep. I want to talk about the leadership first and how to look through that. And then let's talk about the rep and if your leaders are not helping you develop, like what do you do?

But let's start with what, how should you be looking at learning right now in this environment? Yeah, I, I think this is a really great question because you're, you're seeing so many different leaders approach it in different ways at second, you know, when this all first broke out. So let's talk, you know, beginning of March, I was actually in Europe for a family this, um, when the ban got announced, right? So I'm like struggling to give back, wasn't sure if I was going to make it. I come back, I'd spent a whole half a day in our new office on the first week of our two SDRs getting hired. And now we're all at home. So I'm like, okay, I've got no office. I've got two SDRs that are brand new, like a week old brand new.

And I've got my A's that just started in December, right? So I've still got a very fresh team. And, you know, right now I'm acting as both our VP of sales, SDR manager, as well as our CEO. Um, and what I immediately realized is looking back the last few months, I'd spend the majority of my time as CEO. I was traveling conferences. You and I were supposed to be on the main stage at Rainmaker, right? I was doing all this stuff. And what this forced me to do was pause, right? Really, really pause and say, okay, hold up. How is this going to impact this as a business? Right. And luckily because of the space we're in, I'm actually pretty bullish that we're going to be okay. But nonetheless, you don't know if this is going to last two months, three months, six months, two years.

Right. And, you know, sadly you hear of all these startups around us that are laying people off. And so, you know, we had some hard conversations with our investors just looking at our model. And the reality was we just decided to put hiring on pause. We're like, you know what, we're going to proactively take a pause there and focus on the team that we have now. Now this is what a lot of teams are having to do, which is, okay, you've got a team in place. How can you optimize the resources you have and still achieve those results? Right. We're still keeping our goals where they are, but now we've got a very different team and resources. And so I've actually spent a lot more time in the last month and a half, developed my team and probably the last five months prior to that.

And it made me realize just seeing the results over the last few weeks, how important it is and how much I'd overlooked it, even myself being as, you know, obsessed with learning as I am. And, you know, usually when we roll out changes, like we were, you know, changing things, we're a startup, right? We're changing things constantly. What we decided is, you know what, we can't keep throwing out change the team as is. Let's just... What were you changing? Hold on a pause there for a second, but what were you changing, right? As a startup, right? Like give some context on that because right now the world is changing daily, but what were you changing as an organization that you said you had to stop?

So, you know, one week because of, you know, XYZ reason, we were focusing on like this persona or this vertical. And then the next week, you know, we closed a deal that was kind of outside of our realm. I'm like, oh, maybe we should go after more customers like this. And oh, now we have a premium product. How do we go to market with this? Right. And so it's like almost every, as a startup, you're constantly looking for signs of success that can like help you on the right path. And so as soon as you see a little bit of a spike in one area, you're like, whoa, let's double down there. Let's invest more time. And so what I mean by rolling out a lot of change is that I was having my team shift focus a lot, lot more than what should have been the case.

And so all of a sudden, I'm like, okay, let's double down on one persona, right? Let's look at our discovery deck. And I spent one night, three hours, just pen and paper, literally writing the story of what our discovery was because I was looking at our slides and I'm like, look, listening to calls. So that's one of the things I've been doing is spending a lot more time listening to calls. Um, and we were getting what I call lay of the land questions, right? We were asking all the questions around, like we got all the bits and pieces, but we weren't really getting the impact questions, right? Which is okay. You don't have, you have scattered documentation. You don't have a great onboarding program, all these things, but how is that impacting your business?

Right. And what I realized is right now, these purchasing decisions are no longer in the hands of the enablement leader. Like you're having to sell to the CFO and CEO of companies, right? Like that is a different set of expectations on your account executives. So saying like, okay, we, we identified inconveniences that the enablement manager bought into is no longer going to be enough for us to get to the finish line. Right. And so I literally changed the field, which was like, what is the business outcome they're looking to achieve to? How will they sell this to their CFO? Like literally change that in Salesforce. So when the, when the rep would go in and fill in their, their opportunity, they're like, oh shoot, how I did not discover that.

Right. And so we spent a lot of time writing down what are the questions that you can ask to not just identify the pain points, but really what the effects and what the consequences of those pain points are so that then we can identify the right solution. Um, so we completely redid our discovery deck, um, brought a lot more structure to it. I didn't have a talk track for a reps. Like I was of the belief that like, okay, here are the kind of like high level slides, but you know, you kind of get in your own sales flow and, and go with it. And what I realized is like, I was doing them a disservice because there were certain questions when delivered at the right time can help you move the conversation in the right direction.

And so I went back and like put together a script next to each slide, which is, Hey, I don't care how you ask this question, but this is something that you should be uncovering at this point in time in the conversation to lay up the conversation way that at the end, if it's a qualified deal, we'll move forward. Right. And so I spent a lot of time, like really looking, not just at our messaging, but you know, first focus on discovery. And instead of changing that, and then the next day switching to our demo flow for the next two weeks, that's all we focused on every morning from a reinforcement standpoint, every morning I had them, you know, one of them play, role-playing one of our slides, just go through, okay, Ryan, talk to me through this slide.

Like, what are the questions? Right. And just kind of test their understanding and do that reinforcement. I had them record their calls, send them over to me. I'd comment and chorus on what was working, what wasn't, and just really invested that time and coaching them on that piece. And I mean, just this week alone, our conversion from stage one to stage two has increased dramatically and like getting on the phone, like they were fired up, they're so energized and they feel good. And so like that example alone made me realize like, wow, this was such a, it took me three hours one night to just go pen and paper and actually think about this, something that is so key to our business. And yet I hadn't made it a priority.

Um, so going to do that. How do you identify that though? Like how, cause right now I think like you could, you could rip apart anybody's sales process. Right. And, and say, okay, I got fucking problems all over the place. So, oh, or there's areas that can be better than worse. Like how do you identify that that was the area to focus on? So there were two main areas that like we needed to fix. What we did is we literally went through our entire pipeline and looked at what deals are good deals, but stuck. And we realized that we were missing a key persona in almost all of them. The deals that had our key persona were moving along just at the normal speed at which, you know, depending on the industry or, or vertical they were in, we're expected to, but then deals that didn't have that key persona.

So we sell just because the nature of our product to both IT and enablement learning, um, IT is, Hey, drive more adoption of your tools, get more investment on your tech, make it easier to roll out changes because you've got essentially this layer on top of your, all your applications that surface the information your team actually needs to know. The learning plays obviously, Hey, help your teams be more empowered, successful, et cetera, in the apps they use every day. Well, the teams, the, the deals where we are only selling to IT weren't moving. There wasn't that sense of urgency because what we realized being really honest for ourselves is that we were prior priority number 10 on their list, right?

That IT leader first cared about rolling out whatever he had planned over the next few weeks, improving their development process, all these things. And then last, okay, now are people using it, right? Whereas for learning, you care first about like, okay, how successful is my team? And then, you know, adoption. And so we, we looked at those deals and realized like, Hey, we've been going about this the wrong way. We need to really just focus on learning and then build pulling it when necessary. So we made a big shift in kind of our strategy from that point point, um, from an urgency standpoint. And then the second one was the urgency. All of our deals were getting stuck in stage two or stage three, they weren't making it to the finish line.

And so when we went back and listened to those calls, we realized that, yeah, we had a lot of inconveniences. There was a lot of pain, but we hadn't determined the impact. And so I realized that the number one thing that we needed to get earlier on in the conversation was, you know, okay, I understand that this is a pain. How is this impacting your business? What are we going to be able to tie this to that makes this all of a sudden, you know, the pressing matter for your business to back on? So how do you, so I've always wondered, cause I train impact questions and I believe in them, but I've always like had a little bit of a hard time with like the, I don't know, how do you put it? Like the ROI cheese factor in the sense of, well, if I could give you 10 minutes back per day of your reps, I mean, 10 reps, five days that, you know what I mean?

And, and then it's like, I feel the exact same way. And I used to be the purchaser of the software. So I'm always like, just used to complete, like at the end of the day, buying it is an emotional decision. You either believe that it is going to help your team be more successful or whatever the goal is that you're trying to achieve or you don't. And hopefully during the discovery process, you've identified enough pain and been able to paint the picture and the vision of what your world will look like afterwards. But even if when you try to do that ROI calculator, like, yeah, we can point to online studies that say that the average knowledge worker, you know, I think it's like Gartner or something says that they spend two hours per day looking for information.

Frankly, I don't buy that. I would never buy a tool to tell me like, Oh, if you shave off 20% of it, I'm like, no, that and like times the amount of like money that your team makes, like that's an additional X amount of savings. Like, no, that like, so in very rare cases, we'll do the whole ROI calculation where a customer is like, Hey, this is just, this is our process. Hear us out. Like, and we can, we can do that for you. Right. But I think at the end of the day, it's really helping them understand, like, you know, in our case, how is it going to help your employees be more engaged? Right. You're in a, you're just trying to do your job. You're trying to close deals. Things are changing. There's like, your job is hard enough.

Right. How can we just make that a little bit easier? You're in USDR. You're excited to bring, how can we make that life just a little bit easier so that you're not just having to remember everything. Right. And so really getting them to buy into that value, um, rather than, um, the other, the other one, but to, to get back to your question, like the impact questions are still, you know, if you could pull only levers in your business, which ones do you think would actually impact your, your rep's ability to get more meetings? Like where are they spending their time? Not as effectively as they could be. Right. Okay. You're saying that they're, they're sending all these meetings, but they're not opening up with the right questions.

How can we get them better calls, calls for it's where they need them? So it's more so understanding, you know, what are the levers that they can pull to, to see more impacts and then, you know, helping it's the AEs role to figure out, like, how do we fit into that and help them achieve those results? Yeah. It's funny. You know, we implemented, and this kind of goes back to the conversation about training, right? Like I'm a, I'm a big believer in like micro testing stuff. Right. So, but doing it as a group and split testing. So for instance, you know, having a team, uh, everybody ask this one question this week, right? So no matter what else happens when you're in this situation with this persona, ask this question and see what happens and then getting together at the end of the week and saying, okay, what was the result?

Like how feedback did that help? Did it not? Right. And we, we impact questions. Um, the one that I've come up with, you know, there's a bunch that we have, but the one that I liked the most, that is, I think the least cheesy, um, and it dictates forecast by the way is, Hey, so fine, Melanie, this is great. You need training for the team, your ACV, you get to increase your ACV by 20% this year. If you miss your quota, you're going for your series D that's great. Just out of curiosity though. Um, and you want this training in May, right? Okay, cool. So, um, just out of curiosity, what happens if you don't do this training? Like that question, right? And not only what, not only what, what's that?

You're beating the status quo. Right. And so that like, and that's my, my, my, the question is actually what happens if you don't make this decision by the date you said, right? Because there's really only two answers to that question. There's one answer with real impact. Like they miss quota, they do this, they have to, right? Whatever. And there, there's your answer. There's what you're selling against. Right. And then the other answer to that, which is more often the answer, which is, well, I will just kind of keep going. We'll do what we're, you know, we'll just kind of, I guess we'll do what we're doing. Right. And if you get that answer, I tell my reps, like, that's the question I asked Morgan and James during their forecast reviews.

What happens if you don't make this decision? I'm sorry. What happens if they don't make this decision? And if they don't have a good answer for that, I'm like, all right, I don't want to see that on the forecast. Put it as 50%, maybe it'll close. But if you don't have a real answer to that question, just kind of like yours, like, how are you going to sell this to the CFO? If you don't have a real answer to that question, then that deal isn't, the likelihood of that deal is 50-50 at best. Right. So, so I think it's, you know, I think it's, it's, there's a science art to these impacts and into the ROI conversation. Cause I, I'm the same with you, like ROI, like I had a client ask me for an ROI.

So, you know, justification the other day and I was like, really? I mean, you can put it together, but you know, I, it just, I think, and most companies don't know their own metrics. And that's when I asked them, I'm like, okay, well, help me understand if you had to estimate, right. And they're like, well, I don't know. You know, most companies, like, they don't know what they're measuring against. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, for us, if we focus just on tool training out of, you know, that's the only key value we're focusing on in that conversation. I'm like, well, how much of your ramp up time right now do you think is held back because your team is in Salesforce and they don't know your sales process?

They don't know these things. Like, well, we know that it takes X amount of time total to ramp up, but we can't attribute it to just that. And I'm like, well, that's where things break down is that when- Then how do you expect me to do an ROI? And so that's kind of how I handle that objection and how I turn my team. It's like, okay, well, let's turn the question back to them and ask them, okay, well, help me understand these, like, which metrics are you looking to improve? And let's actually get an answer around those. Obviously there's some use cases. I think training is by far the hardest one to measure an ROI for. But it's also probably one of the areas in your business where you will see the biggest ROI.

And it's a misconception. It's hard to measure. Like, I mean, you know, I can't tell you how many hours I spent with my team over the last month and what, you know, the cost of that was, but I know for a fact, just based on some of the deals in our pipeline, that the ROI is there. Right. And you said it as far as motivation, right? I mean, there's, there's obviously the skills stuff, but then there's just the fuck man, I feel better. Like I, like I'm going to go do this. And just that alone part of training or from an organizational standpoint, you know, I was working with a client recently and, um, and I was doing an online training, you know, and whatever. And at the end, we said, Hey, thanks everybody.

You know, any last questions or any, and some rep popped on and said, you know, I just want to, first of all, thank you, John. But, but I wanted to thank our leadership here because I was talking to some, some of my friends recently, and I was telling them that we were going through this training and that our company was investing in this training. And they were like, are you serious right now? Like your company's investing in training in you right now. And you could tell like, they were just like the fact that my company is investing in me makes me feel better. And therefore that feeling of, of motivation is an ROI. You can't put a finger on. Right. Cause I'm the same thing with you. Right.

Like when somebody brings the ROI conversation, I'm like, all right, you want to have this fucking conversation, pal. Fine. Uh, what's the ROI? Am I training? All right. What is your current conversion ratios for your email approaches to your tier one accounts? VPs of sales. And what's that look like? What's that number? Right. You're like, uh, I don't know the number. I'm like, then how the fuck you want me to put together an ROI, you little shit. Right. Like, I don't know, 30%. You want me to throw out that and make that feel good. Like somebody asked me to do the ROI calculator. I did it. And the number was so absurd. I literally put in the spreadsheet, 85% bullshit factor. So I, the number was like huge.

And then I put in big red letters, 85% bullshit factor. And the number was still ridiculous. And I'm like, you're not going to believe that. Right. And, and, and, and actually sidebar on that. Uh, do you find that you get ROI calculate, like questions from non-power or power more often? Uh, non-power more so that the folks that need to go sell the, sell the value to their, to their CFO or to their CFO. I honestly don't think I've ever had a CFO, VP of sales, CEO ever ask me. You know what, going back to, uh, Chris Orlov that you just mentioned, and I think he might've talked about this last time we chatted, but they, he wrote an amazing post that will like forever stick with me, which is when you go into that, like exact leadership, CEO, CFO conversation, like, don't you dare do like your rudimentary discovery?

Like this is your time to have a stance on like the problem and whether they agree or not, like have, have a hard stance, have a hard opinion on the problem in the marketplace right now, where the world is going and to teach them something that they don't already know on how you can help them with their business. Right. And like that just completely changes the, the, the nature of the conversation with them. And I think like the fallback is like ROI calculations. Like I think an inexperienced rep is going to go in and say, well, here's how much you're paid for this. And if we can accelerate, no, if you actually connect with that person on their business, like that CFO is thinking holistically, okay, I've got all these employees.

I've got, you know, these different segments. What are the levers that I can pull to see a 0.01% increase in my business? Right. You're our eyes there. You just need to convince him that you're the solution that gets him there. It's I, uh, it brings me, it reminds me of you want, I'm sure you watch shark tank, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like I love shark. I love it when somebody comes in and they rip them apart when they always say, well, look, it's a $6 billion industry. If I just get 0.1% of this industry, then we've made millions of dollars. And they're always just like, shut the fuck up, get out. Right. You know what I mean? It's the same thing with going into a CFO with, well, the ROI of my solution.

If I saved you five minutes per person per day, it's like, just shut up. You'll lose immediately. So, um, I wanted to comment on that you talked about earlier was the employee motivation piece. Yeah. And that is something that I've realized like during this time is so important and just a little bit of background. So I didn't have a sales background when I started spec it. And so last year I spent a year in this essentially a sales training leadership slash personal development year one program with like these three day immersions. It's incredible. I know Ian Kognak who was just on your podcast. That's where I met Ian, him and I program and like the top rep at outreach and Microsoft. I mean, it is killer.

And I learned more about myself in that program than anything else. Right. I thought I was going in for sales training. This was a melody. It is time for you to take a hard look at what is holding you back in life and we're coming. Right. And so that year long kind of personal development journey was huge in me kind of showing up the way that I do now with more confidence and it's up to my conversations and also how I show up for my team, especially during hard times, et cetera. And I've really tried to instill as much of that in my team as possible. And so, you know, something we've recently implemented is starting the day with a powerful question. One of my friends recommended it. And so instead of going straight into, Hey, let's do a little bit of morning role play.

Let's, you know, talk about meetings booked yesterday. Like all that is still happening, but instead each person on the team gets to come in and choose one powerful question that they'd like to ask the team. So our SDR this morning asked, for example, what's one thing you've learned about yourself during this quarantine and one thing you're going to change afterwards. What I asked is what energizes you in life? Like what are the people, what are the things, what are the topics that like you leave, like vibrating with energy afterwards? And starting the conversation off on that tone, like one, it builds like a different level of connection because it brings in that vulnerability. It's a different kind of motivation where it's not just like, all right guys, we're going to hit these meetings.

Like let's talk about like the real, you know, and some of them are a little bit more lighthearted, but that's been really great. And then I'm actually going to invest in R2AEs. And this is something that I want to do as a company because I believe so much in training and personal development, which is why, you know, Morgan helped train our SDRs, um, from your team. And that was huge. And we were talking about it earlier. Like the biggest thing was your SDRs need confidence, right? Like skills development, like there's so much content out there. They'll get that. But what they got from Morgan is confidence to get on that call. And like, and literally the next day after talking to Morgan, Reese was on those calls, like making dials.

I mean, it was just, it was transformational, right? And it was, he just needed that motivation. And so we're actually investing. I've been talking to the team and they're going to do six months of that program as well, because I think the biggest thing looking at, at my team is, you know, if they can learn to be more connected to what makes them, you know, at the top of their game and really focus on like how they show up and managing their energy levels. And it, and it sounds cheesy, but like focusing on your alignment and meditation, like that changes the tone and the energy and the posture that you show up when you're in that CFO conversation. And so I'm investing just as much on that piece as I am just the sales training piece.

So that brings up a, you know, something I always debate, uh, and, and wonder, right? Science, art, um, teaching curiosity versus being genuinely curious, teaching motivate, you know, helping motivate people versus being motivated, right? I've always struggled with that, right? Because, you know, for me, I've always been a pretty motivated person, right? I don't need somebody to say, John, get up and fucking go. You know what I mean? Like I actually feel bad in some cases, you know, like Tony Robbins, like I'm, I'm, I'm not a hater. I'm not a fan. Um, you know, whatever. Uh, I appreciate what he does. Uh, but it saddens me a little bit that, that people need somebody to tell them to get out of bed in the morning, um, somebody to tell them, right?

So how do you, how do you, how do you, I think there's motivation and inspiration. And I, and I think there's a little bit of a difference between, I think there's a big difference. I can inspire you all day long, right? I can stand up on stage and get you to run across those coals and get you all fired up, right? But the question is, is like next week when, when I'm not there, when Tony's not there, right. And those coals are in front of you, are you going to run across that? Right. So how do you tap into that part of it? Right. I mean, obviously I think you got to hire for it a little bit, but there's an inherently, there's some people on, I guarantee there's some people on your team that are just straight up more motivated than other people.

How do you cultivate that to, to, to get them to tap into that, that find that motivation, find that desire to be curious, find that desire to want to get better, to want to learn. Can you do that? It's a hard question. Um, I don't know if I have the perfect answer to it. Um, I think the first thing I can comment on is I agree. The inspiration pieces is the way that you show up every day for the team is the way that you show up for the customer, for your customers, for your, you know, for your employees, for your partners, you name it leading by example, right? That is someone that I want to show up in it. And I can't remember what this was, but there was an interesting quote on about Steve jobs, which is, you know, you just showed up prepared for Steve jobs.

Yeah. So like you get in a room and like, you're showing up top of your game. Right. And I think that's really the inspiration is, which is for my team. All I can do is show them how hard I work, how much I believe in the mission and hope, you know, hope that they, they feel inspired to care as much as I do. Right. Um, but when it comes to motivation, I think that's a different thing. And that really comes down to like understanding who someone is. And I think like there is no shortcut to that besides spending time with the individuals on your team to understand like, where, where are they coming from? What are the things that are, you know, resulting in the fact that they, you know, crush it on one call and have a bad morning and botch the next.

Like you need to understand who they are, where they come from and spend that time and show that you're not just curious for, you know, your pipeline goals. Like you're curious to understand and connect on a very personal and deep level with that individual. And that is something that I, I really try to do in my one-on-ones to understand like what they feel like is holding them back in, in life. And then, you know, using that, you can start uncovering and it's not something that happens overnight. It's not like, Oh, well, I'm motivated to buy a house in a year. Great. I'm going to reinforce that every time we talk until, you know, but it's more so like, how can you slowly start, you know, taking the layers off that onion and really understand like, what are the things that, you know, they're seeking?

I think most individuals seek mastery. They seek, they seek approval. They just might not be motivated by the same outcomes as you are. Right. Like I am less motivated by cash and money than I am by like feeling like I made a change that impacted a lot of people. Right. Some people are much more, you know, and some sales people I talk to is just like, no, I want, I want that house. I want that car. I want those things. And, and that's fine too. Right. Like different motivations and, you know, spending that time, really understanding that and figuring out and going back to my time as a TA, like I tap business stats. There was no more topic than business stats. And I'd see these students and they'd come in and my goal was to see that light bulb go off.

So we could see the same problem, but trying to find like, how can I explain it in a slightly different way until it finally clicks and you see the light bulb go on their eyes. They're like, Oh, I get it. Right. And I think it's kind of the same thing with like understanding who your people are and finally uncovering like, okay, I finally understand this person. I know what motivates them. Now I can leverage that in the way that I show up for them every day to encourage them and to hopefully, you know, bring out the best in them and help develop them on the skills that are missing. So how do you do that for yourself? So, so, cause I think there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of reflection going on right now.

I could be wrong, but I know for me there is, you know, I mean, we talked about it before we jumped on. It's like this give it be like, we were being forced now to look at our businesses. Uh, we're being forced to look at what's important, you know, to us and what's not. Um, you know, I think my, my silver lining of this whole fucking mess that we're in is, is that my hope is, is that it's going to recenter us on, on, on what's important again, like relationships that are important, you know, about materialistic shit that we were maybe spending money on that we realized, fuck it, I don't need that shit. You know what I mean? So that's my hope. Um, and so I, I think there's, there's some reflection going on right now, but I wonder, is there anything that, that you've come across in your, your journey, um, and what you've learned from other people to kind of put that mirror up and, and really look at yourself and say, you know, what am I good at?

What am I not good at? Where, where do I enjoy? What do I enjoy? What am I just doing just to do like anything that you've come across and in some of the trainings that you've been to some of the seminars that you've gone or just your own personal journey that can help people right now who are like help reps who are sitting at home right now going, I'm fucking lost. You know what I mean? Like I don't, I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing here. I'm in sales because I couldn't get a job at whatever my fucking major was. And this was the only thing that I could make any money doing. And I'm pretty, I'm okay at it, but I'm not, you know what I mean? Like how, how do you put that mirror on right now when you're in your twenties and trying to figure out your journey?

Cause I think, I mean, you're fucking way younger than me and I'm very jealous about that, but, uh, you know, I think a lot of it comes with age, right? I mean, I'm 44 years old. So a lot of now I reflect on a lot of things and I slow down even though I'm still running a million miles an hour, but in my twenties, like I just kind of went for it. You know what I mean? I, and, and thankfully I was blessed that I had that drive. I had that passion. I had that, I didn't know why I just fucking did it. Cause I love doing it. And I had a mission that I wanted to achieve, but what about those kids that were sitting out in their houses right now by themselves? Not, not getting very much direction from their managers and really trying to take a reflection on themselves.

Any tips on that? Yeah. So one of the things I'll share, and I don't think I've actually ever publicly shared it is my age. So I am actually one of those late 20 year olds. I'm 27. It fucking blows me away. Most people don't know that. And it's actually something that, you know, I've been hesitant to share. Like I try not to show it on my, you know, college degree because the reality is in business, there's bias, right? Whether you want it or not, whether it's gender bias, whether it's age bias, right? Oh, totally. I mean, I'd, I'd think if you told me, I mean, I, my, my connection, Morgan's 27, right? So I look at, I'm like, Oh, you're an STR. You know what I mean? If you told me you were 27, if I met you at a conference and you told me you were 27 years old and you worked at spec eight and you didn't say I was the CEO, I'd be like, Oh cool.

So like, are you SDR, maybe an AE, you know what I mean? I totally think that, I mean, that's just, you know, age bias, no question about it. Yeah. And there is, and I think a lot of truth come, you know, there's a lot of truth there. There's a lot, I've learned a lot in the last couple of years, but I also think learning doesn't happen with time. Learning happens in moments. Like there are, it's moments that define how much you learn in, in wisdom. And I feel like I've only finally understood, understood what wisdom means. It's when you learn something like, and it happens in a moment that changes your perspective so hard that you cannot go back to that old way of thinking. You cannot go back to thinking that way.

You're like, Oh no, I am enlightened. The red pill, the blue pill, right? This is the matrix moment where it's like, you want to take the blue pill. Yeah. It's just like that thing clicks off. And like, and to me, that is, that is growth. Like that is where you advance in your career. And so part of, I think, excelling your career is seeking those opportunities to grow, seeking those moments that are going to teach you something, a lot of those, which happens to be failing along the way. Now, in terms of motivating myself, like this is a pretty hard time to go through as a first time founder. Luckily I've got the most amazing co-founder. But you know, right now I live alone in Denver. There's a lot in my life that, you know, from the outside, you want to be like, Oh my gosh, you must be going crazy.

But truthfully, like I am the happiest that I've been in a long time. And I've gone through periods of, of struggle and depression and anxiety where I'm like traveling constantly and it's 4am and I can't sleep. And I'm in a bathtub, just like trying to do something that gets me past that. So, um, I get that piece. And I, so I understand like, it's not a too far distant memory where like, I've been in those moments where it's just like, it feels like there's, you know, just not a path forward. You're stuck and you, you don't know what the answer is to, to move forward. So I've been there is, I think the context needed for what I'm not sure. But you know, I hate running. I hate running. I want to love running.

I want to, I want to have the drive to one day want to run a marathon. I don't, but I looked at myself. I'm like, you know what, if I do not force myself to get out there and get some air and run, I'm going to lose my mind. And so every morning this week, I've forced myself for it for the last few weeks, forced myself to just get out of bed and run. And I normally set goals and I do all this stuff that makes me fail. I said, I'm like, one day I wake up, I'm like, I'm going to be a runner. And I set these goals that just crush me. Right. And I think the same happens in the workplace. You're like, okay, this week I'm motivated and I'm going to set these goals and you set these goals too high. And then as soon as you miss them, you beat yourself up.

Right. And so for the first time, I didn't set a goal around running, which is kind of a weird analogy with meetings book, but I think, I think I'm going to go somewhere with this. And I'm like, I'm just going to get out there and run any day that I get out there and run, I'm going to feel good. And yesterday I ran 3.3 miles in a pretty good time. And I was like, you know what? Like over time. And, and I just kept going and I didn't, you know, set a time. And like at the end, I felt good because I measured it, but I wasn't setting these expectations on myself that were sending myself up to fail. And I think like right now during this time, like be gentle with yourself. Like don't set these expectations on like, okay, I said, no meetings last week.

I'm going to set five this week. It's like, no, that like micro targets, set things that are going to help you feel good at the end of the day about having just showed up and done your job. Right. What are some small, tiny little things? If you're looking to learn new skills, don't, you know, say, Hey, I'm going to read through or go through John Barrow's entire filling the funnel course in one day, break it up, do a little bit every day, right? Like be gentle with yourself, spend a little bit of time. And the number one thing I've done is journal. And I've tried journaling for years. I've never been able to get into that. I mean, I've bought the gratitude journals. Like I've been all, I've done all the textbook things to, to do that.

And it's just not worked for me. Like I like, you know, I, I same here. Yeah. It's just like, yeah, when these big things happen, but for whatever reason, I've realized that me getting into writing and like getting in that train of thoughts where I just have, I love Odessa. I've got Odessa blasting in the background and I'm just literally lying on my floor with my journal and I'm just like writing down ideas. That's how I wrote our discovery deck, which is crushing it right now. That's how I've just reflected a lot on the business, reflected on like our words and our messaging and where we're going as a company and, and stuff. And it's helped me process a lot just by taking that time, no distractions, no phone, no computer, no nothing, just to focus on a single thing at once.

And that close state feels really good when you're able to just like get in the zone. And one of the nights, I specifically read a journal and I actually shared it on LinkedIn and it's a blog post called what energizes me or what energizes you. But I was reflecting after getting off a call with Alex, who works at corporate sales manager outreach. We were in the same program as Ian as well. And he's just like, I get on a call with him and like, I get off and I'm just, I'm just a happier person. And he's the one that encouraged me to do that powerful question. I mean, I just felt so just energized. And it made me realize like, who are the people? What are the topics? What are the things in life that bring me that energy?

And I reflected, like, I barely watched TV this quarantine because I realized that drains my energy drains. It totally kills it. Yeah. I I'm distracted. I try and watch, I leave energy neutral. And there's a lot, what I've realized is there's a lot of things in life that I do because the idea of them sounds fun, but I don't actually check my energy on like, how does that make you feel afterwards? Right. And that has to do with people in your life, all those things. I spent a lot of time just reflecting on that and leaning more into what are the things that actually make me feel good. And that's helped me a lot with just, and none of those were work related. Yeah. Yeah. No. Like figure out like, what is it that makes me like that vibration in your body?

You know, yeah, the good, the good ones. Right. And, and, and it actually the, probably the one I have the hardest time with as it relates to energy is, you know, and you hear it from every successful fucking person out there is, you know, surround yourself with positive people, surround yourself with people that are lift you up, you know, and all that other shit. And look, I'm, I got some friends who are not those people. You know what I mean? Like they're, they're good people. Don't get me wrong. They're like, and that's like they're friends from, from me growing up. Right. But they don't lift me up. You know what I mean? They don't challenge me to, to be a better person. Right. And, you know, and I hear all these people like, fuck those people, get those negative energy out of your life.

And I've never been able to say, fuck you to my friend who I've grown up with for five years. Who's a little bit of a curmudgeon, you know what I mean? But whatever, I grabbed beers with them on Friday and there's no question. I mean, I have to shift my mentality to, to, to not get drained from that. And now don't get me wrong. If they're like super negative and all that other stuff, then I avoid them like the plague. But if they're just kind of, to your point, neutral, I'm not going to cut them out of my life. Right. And so, you know, and my wife and I have always debated about like Boston versus San Francisco, right? For years, we debated about going to San Francisco because I'm like, every time I'm in San Francisco, I'm around people who are jazzed and energized and like one and like creative and do things.

And I'm like, oh my God, I think if we were out in San Francisco, I'd be a multimillionaire right now. Just, just purely about being around that, that energy. Right. Whereas Boston and don't get me wrong, I'm a Bostonian true and through. It's just different. You know what I mean? The energy is different. The entrepreneurial spirit's different. I'm in Denver now and I was in San Francisco and it's, it is just true. It's just different. Like you have different conversations. You know what I mean? Like, like you, you sit down in San Francisco and all of a sudden ideas spark. Ooh, you got to go talk to this person and it's like, fucking a man. Like, holy shit. I got so much to do here. Whereas like here, it's like, all right, how you been?

You know what I mean? Like that type of stuff. And so you can seek out people in your life from Boston. You have those conversations with like, we're on zoom, you're in different city. You could be right next to my kitchen. I wouldn't know. Right. Like you can seek out the people that bring you that energy, right? If you're an SDR, reach out to the SDR manager at a random company that you'd like to work at and be like, Hey, I'm looking for a mentor right now. Would you be able to reach out to another SDR that looks like they're crushing it, that you see posting on LinkedIn all the time. You're like, wow, this SDR has figured out the LinkedIn game. Like reach out and find those mentors. Like you can find that energy everywhere.

Um, I agree with you about San Francisco. I lived there for four years and like, there is no better place to just be, you're surrounded by some of the smartest, just most energized people. But I burnt out there. Like I've never burnt out before either because the reality is, you know, and I think, well, everyone works for a startup there to a certain degree. You know, that's all you ever talk about. Yeah. Right. What I missed was just being able to get off work and just have a conversation with that friend that isn't going to intellectually simulate me, but it's just going to make me laugh. Right. This is going to make me laugh or this is going to talk about anything, but spec it because I love this company to pieces, but sometimes I just need to talk about anything else.

So that's why I'm into Colorado so that I can go skiing. I can get my mind off of things. And so, you know, to what you were saying earlier, I moved back here and a lot of my friends from college, you know, don't necessarily have the same career aspirations as I have, but you know what? Like going to a Red Rocks show with them. Oh man. Oh, that's on my bucket list by the way. Hey, you're, you and I, you know, I, I, I will show you how it's done. I want to see, I want to see Dave Matthews at Red Rocks. Like that's my, that is my fucking bucket list. Top 10 bucket list is to watch Dave Matthews band at Red Rocks. So I have not seen Dave Matthews at Red Rocks. I saw him the last summer here at Fiddler's Green and it was hands down one of the best shows.

I've seen him a couple of times here. And you go, you go to a show like that. And then like Monday morning, like that energy fills me up for the next week. Right. And so it's just identifying like, what are those experiences and who are the people and figuring out like, how do you like balance your own life? Like I can't be surrounded by people, even like you, John, like when I talk to you, I love, I feel so like I get off a call like this and I'm tired, you know, because you got me fired up and I, and I love it. I just need to just hang with someone. Right. And so I think it's just about, you know, not putting people in buckets, but just figuring out like, what can you learn from each person in your life?

And like, what, what do they bring you that, you know, ultimately helps you show up as the best version of yourself? Yeah. I think that, I think that's the huge, right. Is don't limit yourself, uh, to your friends. I mean, you know, and don't wait for it either. I mean, like you said, there's plenty of people out there and, and, you know, people want to help. Um, I think one of the, the more, I mean, the reason I think, you know, I do what I do is from a training standpoint and I think you have heard it and you explain this too, is like that aha moment. Right. I mean, you know, for me, I've made a fuckload of mistakes in my life. And, um, and, and what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to help people skip a few steps.

I don't think you, I don't think you can skip, right. Cause you still got to go through the pain. You still got to fail, but like, maybe you don't have to go through as much pain as I did, you know what I mean? To get here. And, and I think as long as you know, you can find, and there's plenty of people out there that are willing to share that, um, so that you can have that one little extra leg up, right. Uh, and, and kind of learn from somebody else's journey. So. And I think the reverse happens too. Like, don't assume that you need to look up to learn. Oh yeah. No, no, no, no. On your team. Like I learned so much from our SDRs and all the new to the track. So if you're a sales leader, if you're in an SDR later and you guys are kind of stuck on, on messaging or whatever, like reach out to your team, get their feedback, like your brainstorm session, do a Friday afternoon.

Like we actually, we actually did this two weeks ago. This was a fun way of engaging. We were like, okay, what, like, how can we be fun from a marketing standpoint right now? And like, just lift people's spirits up. And so I invited like everyone on our U S team at four cam on a Friday. I'm like, it's happy hour, but we're going to do like a fun brainstorm. And so I threw in a couple ideas, like coloring books, like direct mail, like there's a lot of different ideas. And we just like laughed and had fun. And like the ideas came up from asking people on the team. I was like, this is a fun, you know, and yes, it was work, but it was just fun seeing that creative side. So just realizing like, yes, you know, look for mentors, look for people, you know, for peers, look for people higher than you, but also like, you'll, you'll learn a lot from people in your own team.

And, and the, you know, those friends that you have in life, like talking about how, like, you know, learning happens in moments conversation three years from now that you have with that person where you're like, thank God that person was in my life. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I had that conversation. It might not have impacted or made me realize that I haven't been spending enough time with my wife or my, or my child, whatever it is. Like, you don't know what you're going to learn. So I think keeping that kind of optimistic view, um, as long as it's not a negative energy is. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think I have, uh, like 12 personal guidelines to success. And actually one of them is you can learn something from anyone in any situation.

And even if it's an even if it's what not to do, you know what I mean? Like I'll go through trainings for example, and I'll, I'll watch somebody do a training and I'll be like, Oh God, they're fucking horrible. Like whatever their training is just dog shit. Right. But I switched my mentality to watch how they're presenting and like how they're engaging with people and to see if I can pick up on, you know, something. And it's like, Ooh, wait a minute. I like the way they did that. You know what I mean? Or, Oh my God, I'm never going to do that. Like that was horrible. Right. And so if you, if you take that always learning, I can learn something from any situation in any person. Now, all of a sudden you can start to really find those moments that really make a difference.

I think that's the mindset that a rep at home needs to adopt right now, which is what can I learn from this time? Okay. Is it forcing me to think about my career choices? It focusing, you know, forcing me to think about the company I'm working at or how I'm selling or how I'm showing up or why I'm in the situation, you know, looking for whatever lessons you can, you can grab from this time is going to be the best ROI on yourself. And, and I think I'll leave it at that. Cause I know we're at, we're at time, but like you are your best MVP, right? You are going to be your best return on investment. Like for every minute that you spend investing into your relationship, into your job, spend that time investing in yourself as well, because that'll have a ripple effect in every, in every other area.

And we live in a world where there are so many resources available in every single way. It's just a matter of you making that decision to prioritize your, your own growth. And to get up and run. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Catch me in three months. We'll see how I'll get on that one. Awesome. Melanie. Well, I, I always love talking with you and I really appreciate it. Hopefully everybody got as much value out of this as I did. Um, Melanie, how can, um, well, let's talk a little bit about what we're doing and then, and then how can they find, uh, what's a little bit more about spec it. So talk to me. I know Chris has been running this for the most part and I've been, I've been kind of on the sideline here.

So, uh, tell, tell everybody what we got working. Yeah. So this is really early stage, um, to kind of start testing things out. But essentially after my team took your filling the funnel course and got a ton of value, you know, we created our own kind of like notes and documentation and spec it, which is essentially using the Chrome extension. You can access any notes you have, any documentation knowledge you have, whether you're in your Gmail outreach, LinkedIn, you name it, right. It's knowledge forever. And that's when I reached out to Chris, I'm like, Hey, you guys have this amazing content and all these videos. And someone takes that four hour course or however, maybe it's an hour and a half, but how do we reinforce it?

Right. We know that in order for the mind to act, you know, just the way the brain brain works, if it's not reinforced, it's not going to make it from that working memory to your long-term memory. And so I reached out to him and I was like, what if we took some of this content and created some bite-sized piece of reinforcement so that when they are in outreach, when they are in sales swap, when they are in Gmail, wherever they are, they can get some of those prospecting guidelines, right. When they're in LinkedIn sales now, they can see, Hey, here's how to do company research the way you outlined. Um, so we took that content and put it in a package that's available in our free plan. Um, well, it's available for free regardless, but it's available on our free plan.

And it's got, I think like 20 of the top tips, um, that you teach and filling the funnel. And the goal is, you know, over time, as we get, you know, the word out, we'll start building more of that content so that, you know, people that take your course can then go in and say, okay, great. Now I'm in my workflow. I took that course. I understood it. Now I'm seeing it seamlessly reinforced everywhere that I need it so that I don't just forget that training. Right. Um, and you know, as the SDR manager, as the enablement manager, I see a bigger ROI on the, on the investment. Um, so super excited about that. And you can check us out. Our website is specit.co. Um, we have, if completely free plan, all of our, all of our features functionality, um, for up to 10 users.

And then, um, we've got a couple of different options beyond that, but starting at $10 per month. Awesome. That's fantastic. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm super excited. Cause like I said, you know, Chris and I thought we're like, I, we created, uh, what was it about eight years ago, eight years ago we did sales from the streets and sales from the streets was, was crowdsourced Intel crowdsourced sales training. And it was like little nuggets. And the whole concept was you hit objection handling and then people like you or me or whatever, little tip, here's a whatever. And the whole idea was right when you were about to walk into a meeting and you're like, all right, how do I open up this meeting? Scroll down, pick that, go.

And created this. And it just, it just wasn't the right time. Um, and we didn't have the right focus on it. And so we kind of abandoned it. But, um, you know, I always had this vision of, of my training being like there. Right. So it's like, ah, fuck, I'm about to make a phone call instead of what did John say last month about that? Like, there it is. Oh, okay, cool. So I'm super excited where this is going to go. And, uh, I think we're going to do some really cool shit together. So. Yeah. And I think, you know, when you look back in five years, like the whole concept of, you know, your rep having to go and look for information and kind of training and then ever see it, just going to be gone.

Right. We're going to look back and be like, Oh, how, how did people used to learn? We expected them to remember all of that. I'm a rep depending on where I am, the right information that I need to be successful is surface to me. Um, and so I think like this stepping stone in our partnership is going to be super excited because I think one of the biggest gaps is we can help on the process side, but we're not the experts on the sales training side. And I think being able to partner with folks like you that put those bite size, like you just got the now, not now, but later objection in your email, here are five different ways you can respond to that. Right. Like how does that change your SDR's ability to just get on it?

Right. And remove the burden from the SDR manager. We're like that objection handling is kind of the same, regardless of the product or industry. Right. And then you tailor it to yours, but there's a lot you can learn. So I'm super excited about it. And, uh, I guess we'll see where it takes us. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, Melanie is an absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to what's next with us. Uh, and again, the best way to get in touch is just spec it or what, uh, LinkedIn or something like that for you. Yeah. Feel free to add me on LinkedIn, Melanie, um, filet, uh, trying to be pretty active, not as, not as active as, as you, John, but yeah, you can find me there at me. Love to share whatever I can and love to learn.

We're always, we're going to be hiring again very soon. So please, uh, in the, in the market, feel free to reach out. Always looking for, uh, motivated, awesome, uh, sales reps and help, I'm going to help you guys out along the way as well. So love it. Awesome. Well, good luck, uh, you know, stay insane by it in your place all by yourself and running. Right. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna stay. Who saw? Um, but, uh, all right, everybody. Well, again, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say, um, even if you're having a shitty day, uh, go make somebody smile today. Cause, cause if you made somebody smile, no matter how bad your day went, you had a good day. All right.

So stay safe out there, help each other out. And, uh, yeah, we'll see you next time. Thanks.